Catharsis
by Oliver Harpst
Summary: Sometimes, you just have to give up and let go to finally move on. ExB, all human.


**Title**: Catharsis

**Author**: Oliver Harpst

**Rating**: T, for mild physicality and language

**Summary**: Sometimes, you just have to give up and let go to finally move on. ExB, all human.

**Disclaimer**: I keep dead bodies in my closet, but none of them have turned into vampires yet. :(

**Author's Note**: This is my first true attempt at a long, chaptered story. It will not be updated every day, nor every week. Who knows when I might add more? As the title suggests, this story is my catharsis -- this story is what I write, what I hide in, when I need an escape from my life. The more I update, the more you all should worry about me.

. .

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

. .

"Excuse me, do you work here?" The sarcastic retort dies in my throat when I see her face; she can't be much older than fifteen, based entirely on the look of abject terror in her eyes that are around the same level of height as mine -- no one much older than there is as short as me, so she's likely a freshman in high school at the oldest. I ignore, for the time, the company logo embroidered in bright red across my back, and the obvious uniform I would rather die than be caught wearing in public; it's glaringly obvious that yes, I do work here. But it's the third at least time that I've been asked that this week, and she's barely more than a child... I spare her my wrath.

I don't get paid for wrath, but I do cultivate it pretty well here. There's something vaguely hellish about working in a large chain retail drugstore hidden away in the Pacific Northwest. We're in a small, wet town that only has a single road in and out of it to match the single Starbucks boasted proudly a block away from the courthouse, and the people who live here exist appropriately; they're good people. Kind people. Simple people. I'm somewhat fascinated by them, since I come from an impossibly existing even smaller, even wetter town even further North and West than this, where the closest we have to a chain store is when the doctor sees patients at his house as well as the office. I'm good, kind, simple people born and bred.

The shuffling of feet against our generic tiles brings me back to the here and now present, and I cringe internally when The Ohio Player's 'Roller Coaster of Love' comes on our in-house radio for the fourth time in my shift alone. "I'm sorry," I smile my best Walgreen's family smile, "I didn't see you there." I'm three rungs up a short ladder and my arms are full toilet paper, but I get paid on how quickly I can drop everything to help a customer -- .4 seconds and my hands are free, another 1.2 and I'm on the same level as her. "What can I help you find?"

She doesn't answer me, at least not with words; her cheeks flush bright red, and her eyes look anywhere but mine. It doesn't take a mind reader to know what she's after, and I point her as kindly as possible in the direction of our most deliberately avoided aisle. "Aisle Three," I speak quietly, even though we're the only ones in this half of the store. "Right next to the baby diapers." Her eyes glue to mine in terror at this last bit, and she hurries off in the opposite direction saying something that sounds a bit like 'nevermind the baby diapers.' It's not the first, fifth, or even fiftieth time _that_ has happened, either.

I'm considering going back to the toilet paper, but a glance at the clock tells me that I want to walk v e r y s l o w l y to the front, because I can clock out for lunch in just about three minutes. The trick is to look like I'm working as I secretly dawdle as productively as possible until freedom, so I heft the now empty box and head for the stockroom to dispose of it. I don't like being dirty, but there's something exceedingly pleasurable about throwing a box into the cardboard baler and watching it get crushed into a flat, compact pallet.

Someone wolf-whistles behind me, throwing in a purr-like growl for good measure, and small hands reach forward to get the door for me. "Hey Hot Stuff. Are we here for a tryst in the stockroom again?"

I just roll my eyes. Alice has been my best friend ever since we met on my first day here, nearly three years back, and this is part of our daily routine. She's got her clock set by when I will be out of sight of the security cameras, and she can stop filing her nails at the counter to catch me up on all the local gossip -- which, oddly, she knows all of. "You know it, baby." She perches herself on one of the carts and waits for what is my own ritual with the baler: door open. Box in. Door closed. Smash box. Repeat until the future looks a little brighter. I give this box three doses of the hydrolics for good measure.

"Everything okay, Bells?" I didn't notice Alice come up behind me. "Usually you only crush the boxes once, unless you've had coffee. And then you usually laugh manically." She pets my arm softly, and I debate giving the elevator one more down-and-up journey.

"Just a little tired. Work, school, Mike... I haven't gotten a lot of sleep recently." She's the sort of best friend who knows the full story of my life backwards and forwards, and could probably translate into a few other languages, so she doesn't need to stop me and ask for clarification. "I don't want to be here today."

She laughs, her mood gone from serious to fun in a matter of seconds -- sometimes I'm honestly convinced she might be bipolar. "God damn, Bella. Who does?" She grabs the nearest phone off the wall, and without looking I know she's called for the manager. Again, our daily routine has reached such a rut that we can anticipate the other's moves a full twenty-nine minutes in advance. As she speaks into the headset to the manager, conveniently her aunt, I mouth the words along with her. "Why, Aunt Esme, you're looking exceptionally beautiful and generous today... Well... so gorgeous that I can tell it without seeing you... I don't _want_ _something_... Can't a girl just call her favorite aunt to chat?... Yes, at work... Why yes, Bella **is** due for her lunch right now... How kind of you to offer! I _would_ like to go now as well! Thanks much, Auntie!"

We technically aren't allowed to take our lunches at the same time, something about time management and sales hours, but they learned early on to allow us an exception -- Alice would join me in the break room regardless, and it was just easier this way. "We're in a rut, my dear."

She quirks her head it me in her just-so-Alice quizzical gesture, and even though I'm relatively short for my age she takes two steps for every one of mine towards the office -- the time clock's efficient location as far away from mine as possible swallows the last few moments before my scheduled break time. "A rut?"

"Our relationship... it's so predictable. We come here same time every day, and you do your thing while I do mine, we meet up at exactly 7:43 for our nightly conversations, and then we shuffle back off into things. We sleep in separate beds nearly four miles across town from the other... where's the passion, Alice?"

She purses her lips and the small, perfectly manicured brows furrow in pretend thought. "Passion? Bella, if you wanted passion we should never have gotten married." We both offer small fond one-finger waves to the photo technician Jasper, also married to Alice in a slightly more legal and permanent fashion (and, as she often tells me in great detail I never cared to know, a sure sign that passion does not in fact die after marriage), who just rolls his eyes and pretends he hasn't heard us. "Now, wifey, get in the break room and make me a big damn sandwich!" She swats at me as I scurry off laughing, taking my usual weaving route through the store that leads me away from the more populated aisles and to the safety of the back wall.

It's probably the slowest, most time-consuming route from Point A (for Alice) to Point B (for Big Damn Sandwich, of course), but it takes me past my absolute favorite place in the entire store -- the pharmacy.

In a completely logical, rational, intelligent mindset, it's completely ridiculous to hold any such place in the poorly-lit workplace I loathe as fond in my heart, let alone a place I have no immediate dealings with... let alone one I have never actually set foot in. I like to pretend that I'm a logical, rational, intelligent woman: I understand the daily Sudoku puzzle in the paper, even occasionally complete it correctly, and I'm sure that's as good a sign as any for logic or rationality in a woman. But I'm not any of those things.

I so greatly love the pharmacy for a single, shallow, red-headed reason.

His name is Edward. He's the assistant pharmacist. In the entire two years, ten months, thirty days I have worked at this store, we've never spoken a single word to one another. Once, I pulled out of the parking lot after a particularly grueling opening shift at the same moment he pulled in to close -- he nodded at me when he took my empty spot. I hyperventilated my way home. The extent of our interactions revolve around me tensing up or dropping things whenever his voice calls out over the intercom the number of the next patient, and making an utter fool of myself whenever he looks in my vague direction. Mostly, it's me making up any possible excuse I can to walk past the two small windows that allow me my daily (some would say creepy) glimpses of him.

I walk past the first, Rx Pick-Up, and he's not there. I can already feel the too-easily come blush sneaking across my too-pale features as I think what I must look like, skulking about the pharmacy and casting furtive glances inwards. My slow shuffle becomes a skipping hop-step as I approach the larger second window, Rx Drop-Off. "Have a good day, Mrs. Henderson," I hear his perfect dark chocolate smooth as velvet voice say, and he leans across the counter to bid a charming, heart-stopping goodbye to the woman there. She walks away dazzled, and leaves him in the exact, no more than three feet away line of sight from me. "Hello," he greets me when I pass.

_**HE SPOKE TO ME**_. I'm sure my heart stops beating right then and there, and my vision goes a bit blurry round the edges like I'm about to faint. That blush, the hinted shade of pink that I could feel earlier, has invited along a few friends and family to stain my face the similar shade of a tomato, and I can feel the heat from it in my toes. But it doesn't matter, because Edward is no more than three feet away from me today, and he spoke to me. I'm on cloud nine the entire way to the metal door that leads to the break room.

Which I failed to judge the distance to in my elation, and right as I gather the courage to turn my head and respond with something attractive and intelligent ("Hey"), I'm interrupted by the sudden force of skip-hop-stepping directly into it.


End file.
